This site aims to inform and mobilize Beverly parents to take an active role in all issues related to the funding and operation of the city's schools. It was launched in the spring of 2008, when the city saw its first-ever override attempt fail, followed by the closure of a nearly-new elementary school. Subsequent years have seen further cuts that have led to larger class sizes across the district. While the opening of an impressive new high school and plans to replace the city's aging middle school give us reason to be optimistic, the school community must be ever vigilant in demanding appropriate school funding by city and state governments, and better community communications from the district and School Committee.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

As we predicted in the previous post, Superintendent Hayes is taking issue with Mayor Scanlon's statement last week that "while the number of employees on the city side of the budget was reduced by 10 last year, the School Department added the equivalent of 23 full-time employees."

In a front-page story in today's Salem News, Hayes says "That number of 23 is so flawed,"

"When you just throw these numbers out there, there's the impression the school district is out of control," Hayes said yesterday.

In fact, Hayes said, many of the new positions were either paid for by grants, are self-sustaining or were existing jobs that were not counted in 2008 but were in 2009.

Hayes and Scanlon publicly battled over the employee count and other statistics throughout the 2008 budget cycle. With this year shaping up to be equally painful, it seems things are getting off to a similar start.